The study of Indian IT professionals as a focus group can be considered as an interesting
counterexample of what is usually understood in Belgium as a ‘migrant’, namely people
of mostly Turkish and Moroccan origin working at the bottom of the job hierarchy which
is mainly associated with so-called ‘3D jobs’: dirty, dangerous and demeaning.
India can no longer be characterised as the ‘external Other of the West’ as it was in
Edward Said’s Orientalistic interpretation. There is an up and coming socio-economic
(higher) middle class in India with a global outlook. However, as we can see in the example
case-studies, globalisation cannot be automatically equated with Americanisation or
Westernization as such. A different mentality comes to the fore if we take a closer look at
the career paths and choices of Indian knowledge workers in the IT field.